After giving birth to her daughter via C-Section, Serena Williams, a world-famous tennis player, suffered several complications and had to endure two other surgeries to help correct her blood flow. Williams has said that she has a history of struggling with blood clots, and after giving birth she developed an embolism. Two surgeries and one restitching later, Serena has fully recovered and returned to her passion of playing tennis. But the experience opened her eyes.
According to the CDC, black women are three to four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications in the United States. The CDC even suggests that the reasons for these deaths are often preventable (about 50%). In the United States, women’s health issues are often not taken seriously because women are often seen as dramatic or said to be overreacting to their symptoms. Williams was able to receive excellent healthcare in the face of her after pregnancy issues, but she is a black woman with fame and enough money to cover those costs. Most black women are not that fortunate. If the pregnancy doesn’t go smoothly for other black women, women that are not as well off, there is a good chance that the doctors will leave them to their own devices. And that is just a nice way of saying “let them die.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/feb/20/serena-williams-childbirth-health-daughter-tennis
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pregnancy-relatedmortality.htm
I am very glad that you have chosen to write about this, as it is a growing issue that our current administration is not helping. Black women are not getting the health care they deserve, or equal care at all. It is racism, not giving certain women equal amount of medical attention and it is an historical issue. April 11th-17th is Black Maternal Health Week, and not many know about it. I hope that in the future, there will be more activism surrounding this blatantly obvious racial bias.